BraytonAK

This must be a tip for Vista Ultimate. Userpasswords2 does not exist in Home Premium.

Our server closet has seven servers, two CRT's and a host of network equipment and one weak air conditioner. We're working on replacing the A/C with something with a higher BTU output unit. The temperature is about 85° ~ 90°F in the room. One of our servers reports a CPU temp of 42°C right now, but it's a server that does virtually nothing at this point. I'm looking for recommendations on what software folks have added to their systems that can send Email warnings of temperature increases and maybe even automatic shutdowns? I found one called Server Monitor Pro, but it requires SpeedFan to also be installed. Licensing two pieces of software would be a bit ugly, as well as not being sure right now if SpeedFan can run as a service and would run on our servers. (An assortment of Dell PowerEdge, HP and Compaq units. All of various ages.) If there is software with features beyond this, then that's gravy. We're really looking for something focused on temperatures at the moment.

The common denominator was Adobe Acrobat Professional 8. We did a Complete install. The offending component was the Outlook PDFMaker. I removed that one component and things run perfectly again.

Office has burst my bubble of hope. I tried doing Detect & Repair, but was told that it could not find the source files. (Even with the user set to Admin.) I was able to run Detect & Repair by starting it from the Autorun utility on the installation disc. The problem was the same after the process was complete. I did an Uninstall, Reinstall and Office Update routine to try to fix the problem. No change at all. I attached a screenshot of the error that I get. Really generic with no leading information. The error appears moments after accepting, canceling or declining a meeting. It can also do this when trying to send the request. Maybe I'll set up the victim on a temporary computer and have her do one of these to narrow down the computer or the server. Time consuming.

haha I'm definitely going to do the Detect & Repair function. It seems logical to me that it has to be done on the user account that is having trouble (in other words, while the user is logged in and unlocked.) I tried it briefly this morning, but as is typical of Office, it fails because the user isn't an Admin. So this will take a chunk of time per user. Our AD is currently configured with one OU. We only have about 150 users, at most. If this doesn't stop the problem, I'll definitely do a re-install. I would like to see us upgrade to a newer version of Office. My mouth waters at the thought. I'd love to use 2007, but I know our users would panic. And I've read that Exchange '07 can be a bit troublesome to configure, but that's just one thread that I found. And I know most businesses would rather wait for updates and patches to surface before going to brand new software. {Le Sigh}

I forgot about the Detect and Repair feature. Duh?! And yes, this only happens to a select few people. They don't really have anything in common, either. Two of them have been using their systems for a couple years, another for only a few months. Four of them have been employed here for a number of years, so their Exchange accounts are well-used. Does the Detect & Repair function overwrite any Office Updates? If it does, I'm sure our WSUS server will catch it. (Although it's on the fritz lately, too.)

We've run into a strange problem this year. Our environment is a Windows 2000 Server AD domain. The domain controller is also our Exchange 2000 server. The clients use Windows XP Pro and Office 2000 Pro. The problem that seems to be creeping up is quite peculiar. Different users all of a sudden started getting Runtime Errors in Outlook, which causes Outlook to close, when trying to send or reply to meeting requests. There was also an incident where one of our Resource rooms suddenly wouldn't show any of its published availability at our defined 12 month settings. (The Exchange default is 3 Months.) I had to open the Resource mailbox in Outlook, set it's calendar publishing to 3 months, save that change, then go back in and change it back to 12 months. I think this is what made it start showing its availability correctly again. The runtime error in Outlook doesn't give any specific details about the error, just that it occurred and Outlook is closing. Sometimes repeated attempts to make a meeting will work. When users Accept a Meeting, sometimes Outlook crashes, but the acceptance IS made. This is happening when various resource rooms are involved. We were going to just make this a good reason to upgrade our server and clients to a current version of Exchange and Office. Before spending money and time on that, we'd like to find out if anyone else has heard of these kinds of errors and if they can be corrected.

Thank you for your input. That document should help quite a bit! I knew I was just missing the right "term" to put into my searches.

We're getting ready to implement some ideas in Group Policy on our Windows 2000 domain. I've been looking all over for a simple, printed or electronic version of the Windows 2000 Server group policies along with their default settings. Essentially a text version that would look something like an indented index. We plan on using this to get a fast overview of what options are there, where they're located and then make notations as to what we want to change. I've tried exporting the GP from GPEdit.msc, but it doesn't come out formatted in anything close to what I'm looking for. Any suggestions?

You cannot use an old menu style in Office 2007. You can Auto-hide the ribbon, but that's as close as you'll get. I'm quite fond of the ribbon, myself, and would like it see it appear in other places. The only thing customizable about the new interface is the tiny little row of user-selectable icons at the top left of the entire window. (Just to the right of the Office button. Default icons are for Save, Undo, Redo.)

I would suggest using what is most readable on the screen. Don't festoon the document with multiple colours. A sans serif font, such as Arial, is more readable on-screen. I generally use a 10-point font size as my standard. The "reply as a different colour" feature was new to me when I started using Outlook. Now that I've used it, I kind of like it. The colour tends to help the eye distinguish between original content and reply. A nice alternative to the old way of using brackets: ">". The best thing you can do is restrain yourself and other users from using scripted, ornate or decorative fonts, even in their signatures. The resolution of a display is so much lower than printed output that the "pretty" or "cute" fonts are terrible for everyday use.

I can't view your attachment at work, but I have to wonder if you have another Outlook plug-in or a piece of software that's trying to 'use' Outlook that is being denied.

It sounds like it's behaving exactly as Office 2000 does (our current workhorse). After elevating your user to Admin level, did you supply the installation disc at the same time? In my own experience with Office 2000, you will get the same "Installing..." routine when running as a new limited user for the first time. And it fails for two reasons: No permissions and no disc. I always have to elevate my users AND insert the installer Disc before attempting to run the program. To hear of this really just irks me to no end. I was hoping that after all these years, Office would have been updated to not do this annoying "Installing..." act when it should just say, "You must be an Admin and have the original install disc to continue." Well, that, or it should just work!

Does anyone know of a way to change or tweak Outlook 2000 so that it will show the Calendar at the same time that it shows the Inbox and Folders? To see what our goal is, open your Calendar. Then, imagine that the yellow (by default) calendar in the middle of Outlook is changed to be your Inbox messages. That way you have your tasks and Calendar on the right, folders on the left. Outlook Today is not customizable in this way, at least that I can figure out. My only suggestion was to open the calendar in a separate window and position it to the right of the main Outlook window.